A long-term study finds that eating any amount and any type increases the risk of premature death.

Eating red meat — any amount and any type — appears to significantly increase the risk of premature death, according to a long-range study that examined the eating habits and health of more than 110,000 adults for more than 20 years.

For instance, adding just one 3-ounce serving of unprocessed red meat — picture a piece of steak no bigger than a deck of cards — to one's daily diet was associated with a 13% greater chance of dying during the course of the study.

Even worse, adding an extra daily serving of processed red meat, such as a hot dog or two slices of bacon, was linked to a 20% higher risk of death during the study.

"Any red meat you eat contributes to the risk," said An Pan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and lead author of the study, published online Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Crunching data from thousands of questionnaires that asked people how frequently they ate a variety of foods, the researchers also discovered that replacing red meat with other foods seemed to reduce mortality risk for study participants.

Eating a serving of nuts instead of beef or pork was associated with a 19% lower risk of dying during the study. The team said choosing poultry or whole grains as a substitute was linked with a 14% reduction in mortality risk; low-fat dairy or legumes, 10%; and fish, 7%.

Previous studies had associated red meat consumption with diabetes, heart disease and cancer, all of which can be fatal. Scientists aren't sure exactly what makes red meat so dangerous, but the suspects include the iron and saturated fat in beef, pork and lamb, the nitrates used to preserve them, and the chemicals created by high-temperature cooking.

The Harvard researchers hypothesized that eating red meat would also be linked to an overall risk of death from any cause, Pan said. And the results suggest they were right: Among the 37,698 men and 83,644 women who were tracked, as meat consumption increased, so did mortality risk.

In separate analyses of processed and unprocessed meats, the group found that both types appear to hasten death. Pan said that at the outset, he and his colleagues had thought it likely that only processed meat posed a health danger.

Carol Koprowski, a professor of preventive medicine at USC's Keck School of Medicine who wasn't involved in the research, cautioned that it can be hard to draw specific conclusions from a study like this because there can be a lot of error in the way diet information is recorded in food frequency questionnaires, which ask subjects to remember past meals in sometimes grueling detail.

But Pan said the bottom line was that there was no amount of red meat that's good for you.

"If you want to eat red meat, eat the unprocessed products, and reduce it to two or three servings a week," he said. "That would have a huge impact on public health."

A majority of people in the study reported that they ate an average of at least one serving of meat per day.

Pan said that he eats one or two servings of red meat per week, and that he doesn't eat bacon or other processed meats.

Cancer researcher Lawrence H. Kushi of the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland said that groups putting together dietary guidelines were likely to pay attention to the findings in the study.

"There's a pretty strong supposition that eating red meat is important — that it should be part of a healthful diet," said Kushi, who was not involved in the study. "These data basically demonstrate that the less you eat, the better."

UC San Francisco researcher and vegetarian diet advocate Dr. Dean Ornish said he gleaned a hopeful message from the study.

"Something as simple as a meatless Monday can help," he said. "Even small changes can make a difference."

Additionally, Ornish said, "What's good for you is also good for the planet."

In an editorial that accompanied the study, Ornish wrote that a plant-based diet could help cut annual healthcare costs from chronic diseases in the U.S., which exceed $1 trillion. Shrinking the livestock industry could also reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt the destruction of forests to create pastures, he wrote.

FOR THE RECORD:
Red meat: An article in the March 13 LATExtra section about a study linking red meat consumption to an increased risk of premature death said that preservatives like nitrates probably contributed to the danger. It should have included nitrites as well. —

Try it all you want, there is nothing that will ever convince me that red meat isn't fucking awesome and kicks every other foods ass.
It could give you cancer, aids, syphilis, the runs, and unplanned pregnancy and it would still be the fucking king of all food.

Try it all you want, there is nothing that will ever convince me that red meat isn't fucking awesome and kicks every other foods ass.
It could give you cancer, aids, syphilis, the runs, and unplanned pregnancy and it would still be the fucking king of all food.

Next time you see a study about this, it will cause abortion and random deaths of children in Africa.

we made 1000 people walk around with money in their pockets and 1000 people walk around buying stuff with bank cards and found that you are 4.3% more likely to die if you carry money around money should be banned

before the industrialization of slaughterhouses the consumption of meat was reserved for special occasions. eating it every day was a sign of wealth. at this time (only 100-150 years ago) heart disease wasn't at all common and was believed to run hereditarily in rich blood. the introduction of factory farms changed all of this, suddenly everyone could afford to eat like the wealthy. the same people profiting off you consuming meat and dairy are the same people constructing the food pyramid and telling you how much is appropriate to consume.

in that short amount of time (again, about 100 years, a fucking blip in history) heart disease went from being an unknown disease to the NUMBER ONE killer in the world. anyone with an ounce of common sense can see where we went wrong there, and it isn't going to stop if people continue to lie to themselves with the assumption, "this is how we've always done it". that just isn't true. not eating meat isn't a fad, organic isn't a fad. ironically the only historical "fad" we've seen is the introduction of factory farms, poison in our agriculture, etc. veganism is just a step forward to where we're supposed to be before everything got fucked up.

so yeah, i guess all i'm saying is, a fluctuation in the mortality risk IS pretty silly considering how much its already constantly moving depending on what you decide to do that day. but in general, making strides to side step the number one killer in the entire world would probably do the trick.

IIRC, there was a study a while back that compared the parts of the body of herbivores and carnivores to humans. We're actually herbivores according to the study because we have almost everything a herbivore does. (stubby fingers, no sharp teeth, no claws, etc.) Herbivores can get sick from eating flesh, which might explain the reason the results in this study turned out the way they did.

IIRC, there was a study a while back that compared the parts of the body of herbivores and carnivores to humans. We're actually herbivores according to the study because we have almost everything a herbivore does. (stubby fingers, no sharp teeth, no claws, etc.) Herbivores can get sick from eating flesh, which might explain the reason the results in this study turned out the way they did.

If we were herbivores we'd actually get sick from eating meat. Not just develop or not cancer. Meat is good for us as it provides many chemicals needed. On the other hand we can't eat grass or plants the same way most herbivores can, we either get diarrhea or get sick from it. We're a mix in its truest form.